HAMILTON, Ohio — Hamilton will close North B Street between Black Street and the Two Mile Creek bridge, starting this morning, for most of the summer, the Journal-News reports.
Officials hope to reopen the section of street, which connects drivers to the Black Street Bridge and the East Side of Hamilton, by the evening of Aug. 27, if not sooner. The Black Street Bridge also will be closed.
As it did last summer, the city is working during a period when schools are closed, to minimize detours by buses and other school-related traffic. Hamilton also got an early start on water-main-replacement work while avoiding problems for schools during the Christmas break of 2019.
Detours will be posted.
“We’re finishing up the utilities that we had started up last year between the two mills that are currently under reconstruction by the developer,” said Rich Engle, the city’s director of engineering. “We wanted to get that other utility work done as quickly as possible” to minimize restricting access to the former Champion Paper mill by the developer’s contractors.
Spooky Nook Sports Champion Mill is to be the country’s largest indoor sports complex by square footage, while the original Spooky Nook facility near Manheim, Pa., will remain the largest under one roof, the company has said.
“We’re finishing up the installation of a new gas main, a new water main and new storm sewer from Black Street north to Gordon Avenue,” Engle said.
Crews also will replace a large sanitary-sewer manhole that’s in poor condition in the intersection of Rhea Avenue and B Street.
Gordon Avenue will remain open to southbound traffic on B Street “as long as we can,” he said, but it will have to be closed toward the end of the closure period, Engle said.
When the utility work is finished, crews will reconstruct the street and pave B Street with lower levels of asphalt that later will receive a final layer of the blacktop.
“This is the last major closure,” Engle said. “We’ll have other, intermittent closures on B Street when we do the final paving and those kinds of things.”
From the city’s standpoint with work involving Spooky Nook, “we’re exactly on schedule, where we wanted to be,” Engle said.
Engle hopes the contractor can finish sooner than the scheduled reopening, but said that will depend on the weather.
The Journal-News is a media partner of WCPO 9 News.
